Once upon a time the arcane tree for mages wasn't particularly good. It had some decent talents for enhancing the other trees, but it wasn't something you'd focus much on. It didn't have a distinct way to play. There were no arcane mages. But there were a whole lot of mages who put points in arcane. Presence of mind combined with a spell power trinket and arcane power and pyroblast... that was something everyone had to try, and then do endlessly through the BG as the only tactic they'd figured out. This is why God gave me grounding totem. This isn't the point.

Disc was also like this: an enhancing tree rather than something someone would actually play. In theory these are all gone. But one remains: Professions.

Professions are the fourth talent tree. Fifth as well. It sounds silly, doesn't it? How can I possibly compare professions to talents?

Imagine a tank skipping stamina talents. Or skipping jewelcrafting and blacksmithing. Both negatively affect their performance, but somehow the professions aren't so strictly enforced. Very few guilds dictate professions, instead they are usually handled voluntarily, sometimes for the benefit of the group, sometimes not.

Or there are the PvP talents, PvP professions, such as engineering. In certain situations an engineer may play significantly differently than a normal player, just as someone with PvP talents may have abilities which you do not expect. Some paladins can break out of stuns without a trinket (talent), stun you without a hammer (profession), survive cliffs without a bubble (profession), and sprint without rerolling a rogue (alchemy or engineering).

What are you doing with your fourth talent tree?

3
comments:

Anonymous
said...

I know some guilds that look very closely at "do you have the best profession to complement your role" but... let's not forget this "profession tree" has a very steep respec cost.

And let's not forget every time you "respec" you lose all your patterns, which cannot be reversed, therefore if you were making money from crafting or were a pattern collector the cost to abandon your profession is even higher.

Once I pick a crafting profession, I stick to it, even if it's "no longer as good as it used to be".

And honestly I can understand telling people to go respec for 50g or go buy new gem for 200g but not go reroll a profession, which costs thousands and takes much more time than respeccing talents or resocketing a gem.

And if I have friends who have a dps char with mining or a tank char with herbalism I'm not gonna brand them as heathens.

Yeah, I remember hearing that one of the more hardcore guilds on my server had a "must have two crafting professions" requirement for new applicants and I have to admit I was appalled. Not that it's completely unreasonable or anything, but for me personally it definitely crossed a line in terms of how much I'm willing to let other people tell me how to play.

I think professions were meant to be more for fun and flavour, like the new medium glyphs they are talking about, not something you absolutely must have to be efficient. Also, as the anonymous above mentions, the "respec cost" for professions is very high, especially compared to the benefit.